Allan Appel Photo
Paul Bass Photo
William Celentano Jr.
A single bagpiper played a mournful melody, and an honor guard of white-capped firefighters lined up and saluted the coffin as New Haven said good-bye Monday to William Celentano Jr.
Three hundred fifty people in all — including city officials current and retired along with a large contingent of firefighters and several past chiefs — attended the mass of Christian burial at St. Bernadette’s Church in the East Shore for Celentano, who died at age 81 on Feb. 11 after a brief illness.
Celentano was a beloved figure in the department, having served three terms as chair of the Board of Fire Commissioners.
“He was definitely the heart of the department,” fellow Commissioner Rev. Stephen Cousin said as black-draped fire trucks pulled up to the church on Townsend Avenue where for decades Celentano had worshipped.
The lead officiants at the funeral mass: Fathers Gerard Schmitz, Phillip Sharkey, and John Georgia.
Click here for a full obituary of Celentano who, friends said, got bitten by the fire bug when he was a little boy. With his dad, the late Mayor William Celentano Sr., helping with the introductions, young “Bill” began to hang out with the firefighters at the old Engine Three firehouse on the corner of Park and Elm.
“He [practically] lived at Park and Elm,” recalled former Chief Michael Grant, who offered the formal eulogy at the beginning of the service.
Celentano never became a firefighter himself, or a politician like his dad, the city’s last Republican mayor. Early on he launched a life of civic-mindedness, friends and family recalled. He became a member and then, recalled Grant, the heart and soul of the volunteer Box 22 Firefighters Emergency Canteen, which was founded in 1930.
Former Fire Chief Michael Grant and Mayor Elicker before the service.
Celentano, Grant recalled, drove the canteen’s truck to multiple alarm fires at all hours of the day and night to serve refreshments to the tired men and women of the New Haven Fire Department at fires throughout the city. He received the Civilian Award from the firefighters’ union Local 825, the highest honor a person could receive from outside fire service.
At all hours of day and night, in summer and winter, former Chief Grant recalled, Celentano would drive up in the Box 22 vehicle with water or Gatorade in warm weather and coffee in cold to give to the people on the firefighting line.
But it was more than that.
“He was very caring, asking ‘How are you?’ to the firefighters,” Grant remembered. Most firefighters wouldn’t reveal if something was wrong. But Celentano had a way of detecting if there was a real health problem or injury beneath a steely demeanor, and he’d bring it to the attention of the chief or the on-scene supervisor.
Cousin and D’Amato at the church.
Celentano also served on the city’s Board of Finance, the board of St. Raphael’s Hospital, and a range of other organizations — all the while running the family’s funeral home business.
It was the firefighters who became Celentano’s extended family.
Denise D’Amato, who recently retired after 40 years with the fire department and served for 22 of those as the clerk to the Board of Fire Commissioners, characterized Celentano as a true gentleman. “His whole life was devoted to the fire service and to Box 22, and if you had a problem he was the kind of man you went to,” she recalled.
Celentano also distinguished himself as a preserver and collector of antique firefighting memorabilia. Speakers said the basement of his house is full of 600 artifacts from fire departments across 30 countries.
The antique apparatus preservation odyssey piece de resistance unfolded in 2012. Years before that Celentano had gotten on the trail of a 1909 Westinghouse, horse-drawn, gas-powered pumper that had belonged to the New Haven Fire Department back when Rufus Fancher was chief. You may not know who Fancher was, but Celentano certainly did.
The equipment had disappeared. Through a long search, including a title search, Celentano tracked down that the apparatus had been lent to museums in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and never returned.
Celentano and friends went up to the barn where he found it, pulled it onto a trailer, and drove it back to New Haven. Money was raised to restore the machine. Now it resides, a shining example of early firefighting equipment, in the atrium of City Hall near the eastern entrance.
Speakers recalled Celentano’s calm demeanor, his gentlemanliness, and his grace.
Cousin perhaps captured it best.
When he became a commissioner three years ago, Cousin recalled, Celentano took him around to the various firehouses introducing him to the firefighters and staff.
“I was trying to impress him wearing this suit,” Cousin recalled. As he bent over, his suit pants ripped. “It was embarrassing for me, but I was able to laugh it off because he was just so happy I was mixing it up with his firefighters.
“The consistency of his presence, the way he was able to light up a room! He became my barometer, my measuring stick,” Cousin said. He characterized Celentano, through his consistency of service and his perseverance, as the spirit of the department.
“There will never be another Bill Celentano,” said Cousin.
Two New Haven fire trucks, each caparisoned with a black drape of mourning on their side panels, were waiting outside the church to lead the cortege to the St. Lawrence cemetery, where Celentano was to be buried.